Mark Levy transforms workplaces by shaping meaningful employee experiences, strengthening culture, and helping companies connect purpose with people.
5 of 5
A pioneer in employee experience. Mark Levy was insightful, passionate and inspiring!
Julia Douthart, Executive Director
Work Rebooted
Mark Levy is a globally minded Employee Experience Leader known for shaping workplaces where people feel inspired, valued, and connected. He has helped major brands rethink how culture, purpose, and talent development come together to support meaningful business results. From pioneering the Employee Experience function at Airbnb to guiding mission-driven companies worldwide, Mark brings a rare blend of strategic insight, humanity, and practical tools for building thriving organizations.
Mark Levy has built a career around a simple but powerful belief: when companies create environments where employees can bring their full selves to work, everything changes culture, performance, and community impact. With a global perspective and a deep commitment to purpose-driven leadership, Mark has become one of the most prominent voices in shaping the modern Employee Experience.
His journey began early in his HR career with well-known brands including Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, and Gap Inc. Here he partnered closely with business leaders to develop innovative approaches to learning, leadership development, and work-life integration. These roles shaped his understanding of how organizations can unlock the talents and passions of their people when they’re supported with intention. His experience expanded further when he spent two years living and working in Paris for Thomson/Technicolor, strengthening his global view of workforce culture.
Mark’s career reached a defining moment when he became the pioneer behind designing the Employee Experience at Airbnb. His work sparked a significant shift in how organizations worldwide view the HR function moving from traditional processes to a holistic focus on the entire employee journey.
Under Mark’s leadership, Airbnb unified HR with teams focused on workplace, culture, and social impact. This integrated approach supported the company’s mission “to create a world where you can belong anywhere” by giving employees a clear and meaningful sense of belonging within the organization itself. The impact was recognized globally, including by Glassdoor, which named Airbnb the #1 Place to Work in 2016, highlighting the influence of Mark and his team on creating a thriving internal culture.
After Airbnb, Mark became the Employee Experience Leader at Allbirds, guiding the company through a period of global expansion. He helped scale people and culture practices while embedding mission and values into daily operations. Alongside his in-house leadership roles, Mark began advising companies of all sizes from fast-moving startups to large multinational brands on how to evolve from HR to Employee Experience.
His consulting work focuses on integrating internal and external brand identity, strengthening the connection between companies and their employees, and fostering meaningful relationships between employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate. His approach blends strategic clarity with a deep understanding of human motivation, making his guidance both transformative and practical.
Mark also partners with Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm dedicated to supporting underestimated founders women, LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs, and people of color. He advises them on scaling their operations, identifying aligned investors, and guiding their portfolio of founders as they build and grow their businesses. His work here reflects his long-standing commitment to equity, opportunity, and strengthening underrepresented voices in business.
Beyond his advisory roles, Mark holds a JD/MBA from the University of Colorado, after graduating from Colorado College. Although he began his career practicing law, he soon realized his calling was elsewhere helping organizations attract, develop, engage, and retain diverse talent while cultivating culture and building meaningful community connections.
Service has always been core to Mark’s work. He has long been involved in programs that encourage employees to give back through volunteer initiatives and community involvement. He served on the Gap Foundation Board of Directors and currently sits on the Board of First Graduate, a nonprofit supporting first-generation students on their path to college completion. This commitment to giving back echoes his broader philosophy: companies thrive when they create purpose beyond profit and empower employees to contribute to the world around them.
5 of 5
A pioneer in employee experience. Mark Levy was insightful, passionate and inspiring!
Julia Douthart, Executive Director Work Rebooted
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark Levy, the pioneer of EX and former Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb will share how he scaled the culture through significant growth in headcount and scaling of the business. At Airbnb, there was a focus on preserving culture and driving a sense of belonging through that ascendancy. Mark will tell the stories, examples, and lessons learned on how he and his team shifted from traditional HR to Employee Experience by redesigning through a human-centric approach.
Now with COVID, we’re in a downward curve…but a lot of the principles we put in place to make this shift are even more important with employees working from home, social distancing and isolation. Mark will share the key considerations and give examples of acting with empathy in the new now. We need to address the hierarchy of employee’s needs depending on the context at the time, and it requires a new way of looking at managing, and believe this will also be a reset for the way we work going forward.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark will give context on how, at Airbnb, he pioneered the shift from a traditional HR mindset and organization to what is now emerging at the best practice of looking at the end to end employee journey through the creation of Employee Experience. This is a mindset, ways of working across the organization, as well as an important structural shift within the company.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark will share how Airbnb took it’s unique and authentic mission and values and translated them into a globally recognized culture. Mark will also explain the importance of integrating the external promise with the internal employee brand proposition. Mark and team designed a strategy of “Belong Here (at Airbnb)” based on their external mission of “Belong Anywhere” (creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere). The outcome was more engaged, and productive employees, with strong retention and an increased focus on meeting the needs of the customer/business.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark will share how his work at Airbnb broke down the walls between employee, hosts, and guests (customers) to create community. This was about creating “belonging” part of which focused on Diversity and Belonging (inclusion) within the organization. Mark will address the importance of connecting the company and the employees, the employees with each other, the employees to the customers, as well as the employees in the communities in which they operate through volunteerism.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Companies should be deliberate and intentional in how they think about scaling. Mark will share how he designed an Employee Experience strategy to ensure that the Company, the Employees, and the Culture grew by design to ensure that what was special and unique to Airbnb would evolve and scale as the company grew exponentially.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark can work with your team on education, strategy, and implementation of your company's Employee Experience (EX) by providing inspiration and guidance through a multitude of formats.
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark Levy and Luanne Calvert have combined presentations bringing together the worlds of EX and CX.
Key Takeaways:
Keynote by Mark Levy:
Mark Levy and Luanne Calvert have combined presentations bringing together the worlds of EX and CX.
Key Takeaways:
Watch Mark Levy in action
